


Of the night-wind and darkling plain

by Weissnichtwo (LoudenSwain713)



Series: vows of the faithless [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Andy is also sad, Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Booker is Sad, Break Up, But the rest of the series is pretty hopeful!, Canon Compliant, Extended Metaphors, F/M, Gen, Heartbreak, Implied Relationships, No Fluff, No one is having a good time tbh, Parallels, Past Relationship(s), So much water imagery, The Beach Scene, Water Imagery, andy-centric, kinda??, more than anything i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:42:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26036590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoudenSwain713/pseuds/Weissnichtwo
Summary: Andy has to say goodbye. It's not easy." His head is bowed by the time Andy steps beside him. The sight of it is wrong, something perverse and unnatural; he has never bowed his head to anyone, least of all to her. He doesn’t say anything, either, and the silence between them makes her throat squeeze tight.When she speaks, her voice does not betray the cry that is stuck inside her. “There’s got to be a price,” she says, like she came up with it herself. Like his sentence, when it was decided on, didn’t make her shudder from the words alone; like she hadn’t been hearing the waves of the Atlantic crash in her ears for the past hour. "
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko
Series: vows of the faithless [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1829116
Comments: 4
Kudos: 53





	Of the night-wind and darkling plain

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to crazyreader12, as always. Love ya
> 
> Title taken from the poem "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold
> 
> The sea is calm tonight.  
> The tide is full, the moon lies fair  
> Upon the straits; on the French coast the light  
> Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,  
> Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.  
> Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!  
> Only, from the long line of spray  
> Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,  
> Listen! you hear the grating roar  
> Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,  
> At their return, up the high strand,  
> Begin, and cease, and then again begin,  
> With tremulous cadence slow, and bring  
> The eternal note of sadness in.
> 
> Sophocles long ago  
> Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought  
> Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow  
> Of human misery; we  
> Find also in the sound a thought,  
> Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
> 
> The Sea of Faith  
> Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore  
> Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.  
> But now I only hear  
> Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,  
> Retreating, to the breath  
> Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear  
> And naked shingles of the world.
> 
> Ah, love, let us be true  
> To one another! for the world, which seems  
> To lie before us like a land of dreams,  
> So various, so beautiful, so new,  
> Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,  
> Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;  
> And we are here as on a darkling plain  
> Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,  
> Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Nicky can’t meet her gaze when he approaches, eyes downcast and feet dragging. His jaw works uselessly for a moment, fumbling for the right words. He starts several times, all in different languages; Andy thinks that he looks the youngest he’s ever been when he finally says: “If you want, I can -”

She’d been looking, vaguely, at the river and the man that had been standing on its bank, but at Nicky’s words, her head snaps around. “No.” Her voice comes out grating and harsh, the type of thing she’d say to an enemy, not her family, and the wide-eyed, apologetic expression he gives her is enough to make Andy soften. "No,” she repeats, calmer. “It's only right." But she does not say it is fair. It isn't, and the unfairness aches like an iron coffin thrown to the bottom of the ocean. What is just is not always fair. That has been the way of the world since before she was born; who is she to fight it?

A part of her screams that she is Andromache of Scythia, that she was a god once upon a time, that she will _not_ be denied. But then she remembers the last time she felt such emotion: a too-careless night on the Cliffs of Dover and the grief that followed. The thought is banished then, like so much salt upon the sea.

If the sea boils and leaves the salt to rot the ground, she gives no indication.

Nicky gives a wan smile like he knows anyway. “Alright, boss. We’ll be…” he gestures vaguely to the inside of the building where Joe and Nile are trying and failing to inconspicuously watch them.

The sight makes Andy chuckle, and she nods. “See you in a few, then.” But her mood sinks as he walks away, and when she turns around and begins to walk down the steps to the bank of the Thames, she cannot help but feel as if iron chains are pulling her down into its depths.

Five hundred years ago, she and Quynh had walked along the shore of this river as if the rest of the world didn’t exist. The next morning they would free the women of the surrounding counties from the injustice they faced, but, just for that night, they could be themselves. They’d been young then, even with the weight of millennia stacked upon them. Back then, it was almost as if the years didn’t matter as long as they were together.

Of course, the next day they’d been captured. A few days after that, Quynh had been lost to the eddies of time.

His head is bowed by the time Andy steps beside him. The sight of it is wrong, something perverse and unnatural; he has never bowed his head to anyone, least of all to her. He doesn’t say anything, either, and the silence between them makes her throat squeeze tight.

When she speaks, her voice does not betray the cry that is stuck inside her. “There’s got to be a price,” she says, like she came up with it herself. Like his sentence, when it was decided on, didn’t make her shudder from the words alone; like she hasn’t been hearing the waves of the Atlantic crash in her ears for the past hour.

From beside her, Booker makes a sound, small enough that, if made by anyone else, would’ve been missed. It sounds somewhere between concurrence and a gasp.

She closes her eyes to block out the sight of the rushing water and doesn’t open them until the verdict has been passed. “One hundred years from today, they’ll meet you here.” The distinction between we and they, which just two days ago would’ve been nonexistent, burns its way down her throat. “Until then, you’re alone.”

She looks at him, but he does not look back. His eyes are empty, dead flesh in a body that cannot die, and Andy’s gut clenches in a way it hasn’t in five hundred years. She keeps staring and waiting and breathing until she finally has to glance away just to swallow the bile rising in her throat. Booker is not supposed to be like this. He is loud and smug and inquisitive. He adapts. He is not...he has never been quiet; he has never been a coward.

The words _until now_ float, unwilling and oppressive, in the back of her mind, and she hates them.

After she’s looked away, his head moves up. His eyes are dull and matte, but they’ve focused again, even if the object of his attention is far beyond either of their sights. “I hoped for less, but…” His voice trails off, choked and running; for a moment he stops breathing, and she can hear it. She can hear the years stretching ahead of him like they stretch behind her, how they roll in again and again and again, and she does not want to let him go. She does not want him to continue.

But he does. “I expected more.”

Andy can’t let him go. She can’t leave him like this and so she says: “Nile was going to let you off with an apology.” Her voice does not break on the last word, but it is a near thing. 

She doesn’t tell him that this century is a kindness she did not give him. She doesn’t tell him that it was Nicky more than anyone that fought for the lessening of his punishment. She can’t stomach the thought that this time it is not nameless, faceless pursuers that are sending her heart away; she is responsible for his hurt, more than anyone else.

Booker chuckles, and her reaction is as familiar as the handle of her labrys: smile soft, her muscles relax for a moment and she turns, instinctively, to angle her body towards him. He shakes his head fondly. “Just give her some time.”

His words send jolts of something ill and slick down her spine. Time. She doesn’t have time. A year ago she might’ve been ready…but she’s needed now. Nile needs her. _Booker_ needs her. And it’s her fault that none of that can happen now. “I’m gonna miss you.” Her voice wavers in a way she does not try to hide; it creaks with the weight of millennia and all the unsaid words that are suspended between them.

His response is given instead in a series of half-motions. Booker turns to her, gaze numb but livening as the seconds pass. His eyes flicker to hers, a sea of apologies in that momentary glance. His hand drifts, unconscious and then aborted, towards her. He draws it back as if burned, though she can barely feel the heat of him. And just for one more minute, one more second before her life crashes down around her for the second time in a thousand years, she does not let him go. Her arm pulls him close to press tightly against her, so near that she can feel his heart pounding in his chest. She closes her eyes to block out the sound, but the sensation stays: loud and repetitive, a never-ending drumbeat cycling through her mind that will surely haunt her dreams.

His hand cups the back of her head as her own clutches at the seam of his jacket. The thought of releasing him now is sickening, makes her gut churn, so she waits until he is ready to go. She is content to wait the rest of her life, and for a few blissful seconds it seems that fate will allow her this. His face tucks, almost shyly, into the curve of her shoulder, a touch that is as much a promise as it is an unspoken farewell. But inevitably he shifts back, his lips brushing her cheek as he does, and Andy knows even before she sees his expression that it’s curdled with guilt.

He looks down, beside, above her before he finally lets her catch his gaze. His chin trembles as he speaks, though he doesn’t do her the dishonor of looking away. “Um...I won’t see you again.” His words crack at the end, a cry that he (almost) doesn’t let fall.

It hurts. It hurts in a way Andy hasn’t felt in centuries, and there is a not-insignificant part of her that wants to hurl herself into the Atlantic in her own metal box. But she does not. Her time to collapse is later, after the waves of erosion have finally eaten away at her fragile, fragile base. As it stands, her foundations will hold her for a few minutes more. “Have a little faith, Book,” she says, because it is what he needs to hear. She can feel his eyes on her as she walks away, and it’s all she can do to put one shaky foot in front of the other. The cliff begins to crumble. She does not turn back.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you as always for reading this! Kudos and comments are appreciated <3


End file.
